Plan Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'd like to call to order the December 16th, 2025 planning commission meeting, city of Franklin. Have a roll call, please. Matt Moy here. Michelle Stringer here. Irene Nally here. John Kimsky here. Suzanne Finley. Michael Spangberg. Phil Carson here. Georganna Halam here and Norm Gay Park here. We do have a quorum. We have a quorum. We join us in the pledge of allegiance, please. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Do we have a motion for approval, amendment, or deletion, corrections for the October 21st, 2025 planning commission meeting minutes? I only found one duplicate of of so whoever did that was did these benefits in single space was great. Who's who's taking credit for it? They well they were great. Um on the one two three four five six line down there's an extra of on page two. So other than that it's good and I'll move to approve with one edit. I'll second motion second to approve as amended. All those in favor signify by su saying I I those opposed same sign passes unanimously.

Okay. Reports committees and officers technical technical review committee October 23rd and November 20th. Joanna please. Y so we have had um two technical review committee meetings since the last plan commission meeting. On October 23rd there were two items on the agenda. The first one being u a parking lot expansion at Victory Christian Church which is located at 1720 North Graham Road. Uh they are looking at expanding their parking on the west side of their facility. Um and it includes some drainage improvements that will address some of the issues that are currently going on at that facility. Um, second item that was reviewed was for the Indian-American Water Company Bulk Fill Station. Uh, this is the one that was originally proposed to be constructed on Ninevea Street and has actually um, Indian-American reassessed and are relocating that project to their existing facility that is on Sloan Drive. It's going to require the additional equipment for that station and just some pavement for turnaround of the trucks. The second meeting was held on November 20th. Uh there was two items on the agenda that were um together. It was for the Umbar Lane annexation in reszoning. Application was submitted by Arbor Homes for the property located at the northeast corner of Umbar Lane and County Road 75 South. Uh this is the same property that had come before the plan commission previously for annexation and resoning that had been forwarded to city council. um it did not continue through city council for lack of approval of the fiscal plan. So they have revised uh some of their petition and it is back before us. Um that was reviewed at that meeting.

Any questions, comments or thoughts on the reviews and report? Excuse me. See, then we'll move on. That reference you just made to the Humbburger Lane annexation reszoning is what I'm reading on here be to be continued. Correct. Yes. The petitioner has requested that it be continued to the January 20th meeting through some of the discussions and um information that was presented at the technical review committee meeting. Needed additional time to get that together. Um the we have met with them and they are continuing to move forward. Um however would like to just bring it to your attention that it may take some time for that information to be gathered. They're going to keep us updated and staff will continue working with them on getting this to move forward. But otherwise it is continued to January 20th. um it was actually notified properly and with that continuence the petitioner did send a notification to the same parties that were required to receive the first notice uh letting them know that it was continued. That makes sense. I got a question that that doesn't come before us. It go it will go just it will come before us again. Yes, it does come before you again. It's starting the process completely over. So there First need to be a recommendation from plan commission to forward it to to city council. Correct. Y So the 20th is our our meeting then. Correct. Assuming they get everything together if may be continued or remmonstrators have an opportunity for automatic continuence too if they desire. So thank you. That's two separate resolutions or ordinances. Correct. Okay.

Next on the agenda, TC 2532 20225 infrastructure improvement analysis report for the parks and recreations facility park impact fee 2025. Joanna, do you have a report on this before the petitioner? Yep. Just a brief overview. Um, with impact fees, there is a requirement that every five-year there be an analysis of the needs of whatever impact fee is going towards. Um, in the city of Franklin, the only current impact fee that we have is the park. Uh, this is similar to the same process that some of you may have went through in 2020. And Chip Orner from um Parks and Wreck is here to provide more information on the report. Long time no see. Good evening everyone. I'm Chip Warner. I'm the director of parks and recreation for the city. Uh thank you Joanna for introducing park impact fees. Um give you a little background about park impact fees. The fee is actually attached to the building uh permit stage. So when a developer would pull a building permit uh to build a new home, that's where this fee is attached at. Uh the fee actually covers new park development uh basically um because of the impact a new resident would have hence park impact fees on the park system. Um it can only be used for new infrastructure improvement stuff. It can't be used for day-to-day operations. It can't be used for maintenance of existing facilities, um staffing, any of that kind of stuff. That's only new park facilities that are are going to be impacted by new people. Um this plan is uh the fifth one the city has done. So uh we're we're pushing 25 years now that we've had park impact fees. Um this uh plan is uh 26 to uh

2030. Uh but the plan actually requires us to look 10 years out, not just 5 years out of what we anticipate parks and recreation infrastructure needs are for the next 10 years based on population estimates. Obviously um it also requires us to do a self-re basically um what do we think we need and then we also need to attach the cost to that. So um do I know what costs are in 2035? None of us do but we're going to base it kind of on on what today's costs are. Um after that uh I should tell you that we we actually hired a consultant to actually write this. Um don't think I'm didn't write it. I didn't write it. Um U uh Nikki Franklin from uh Peters and uh Franklin um municipal consultants here in town um wrote the plan. The next phase requires us to uh appoint a park impact uh review committee uh which was five people in the community and they have very specific purposes. Um three are generally at large people. One is a building builder uh developer representative and one of them is a real estate representative. So we have the um different uh representation in the city. Those people this year were Eric Luggers, uh Les Tabling, Ken Kosski, uh Deb Brown, Nally was the realtor rep and then Marissa Stout was the builder rep. So we did get um input from community members and what they thought. Very good meeting. Um it was scheduled for 45 minutes. I think it lasted two hours uh because we had some really good discussion about the plan. Um, one of the things that, um, I found interesting when I was doing a little research in the last week or so is I I went to all the developer uh, all the new home building websites in in Franklin and they all had uh, how beautiful Franklin

parks are, how lucky we are to have the historic Greenway Trail and all that good stuff, which we know because we all live here. Uh but as a new resident comes in, that's a marketing tool that they use, right, is uh the the great park facilities that we have and those things. Um I'm a little disappointed Suzanne's not here tonight because I was going to talk about Franklin was a real early leader in greenway development uh uh in the state of Indiana. We were one of the first people to have trails in Indiana. We were doing it back in the early 90s uh when people were just starting to think about it. We already had our existing greenway trail in place by about 95. So we have uh really elite park facilities here in Franklin. Um it's not by accident. Uh we've done a really good job of planning out those facilities. Um uh this is just a tool that we have. U as the population grows, how can we pay for this new infrastructure? The one of the advantages to an existing person in the city is that this is not something that somebody that existing lives here pays. It's only people that are going to come make the impact. So, it's the new house development. It's not when I'm renovating my house or or that's not what you you have to get a building permit for that kind of thing. It's not what we're talking about. We're only talking about a new house that's uh new to the city. Um I could go through this in very great detail if you want. I have it pretty much memorized. Uh but let me give you the highlights. The highlights are let's talk about the previous five years. Uh since we've had obviously we've had park impact fees for the past 5 years. Uh the fee off the top of my head was $1.42 per house. Um they're a little bit less for apartments and duplexes and I'll talk about that in just a second. Uh but over the last 5 years we've we haven't collected a whole lot of park impact fees until the very end in the last 6

months we've really uh we've collected more in 6 months than we did in four years almost because that's a big huge uh two apartment complexes um that have uh been built. You know this because you approve them. Um so it has it has raised our park impact fee balance up. Historically, our park impact fee balance has not been that much uh because we just haven't used it as a tool as much as we could have. Um so the last five years, most of what you have seen in park development has been either city funded or um we've used bond issues or those kind of things, but it really hasn't been a whole lot of park impact fees uh have went toward those developments. And the things we know of like Youngs Creek Park and amphitheater is one that we all know of that had a little bit of park impact fees about $20 and some thousands but the overall project was about 9.8 million. So as you can see most of it was was done by a redevelopment commission bond. Um we just uh redid um the active adult center. Um so that's another huge project that we did here in the community. All paid by cash that city had on hand. So we didn't even bond for that project. It was it was reserve cash that the city had done a good job over the years of uh you know preserving and we were able to to get a new facility and not bond or or use park impact fees for what we did use park impact fees over the last 5 years was a little bit for the uh if you want to get very specific it was the pickle ball courts at Youngs Creek Park uh we had bought two parcels of property in the last 5 years and parks one was adjacent to Blue Heron Park believe it or not we didn't own. If you've out been out to Blue Heron Park, we didn't own from the trail to the creek. Uh that strip was actually owned by somebody else and we just had our right to use it as the trail that became available. We bought that property. So, we actually own all the way to the creek now uh at

Blue Heron Park. And then we also bought a parcel of land that is on home avenue. Um, you'll see it because it's now has the park fence around it. But there used to be a house that was what I call dead central of the flood of 2008 because that was the house that used to sit on the corner of that park entrance. If you recall during the flood, it gutted the whole bottom of that house out. It was gone. Uh, that homeowner uh sold that property to us, too. So, now it's expanded Province Park just a little bit. That's really all we use parking impact fees for. prior to that. Other things you see we've used them for would be the large shelter that you see at Blue Heron Park. Uh that's kind of toward the front. That was the park impact fee uh purchase. And other than that, um believe it or not, we haven't had the money because we haven't brought in that much money. Those I mean those are the that shelter of Blue Heron was about $100,000, but that was probably seven, eight years worth of park impact fees because we just didn't have the money to do that kind of stuff. So that's why when we start to look at these numbers, you're going to see that they're a little bit bigger than than they have been in the past. And I have all the previous numbers to show you um I can go back all the way to the inception of park impact fees and show you the history of where we've been, how you know what that money's been used for. Uh this fee uh that we have now is going to be $24.90 per building permit. Now, you're you're going to ask the same question my boss asked me, uh, is how does that compare to everybody else? Uh, what does, you know, where does that put Franklin? And you can look at that on the very last page. If you're one of those people that want to go to the end, you can do that. It's in that report. Um, and I'll tell I'll tell you those numbers in just a second. You can see on this report that here that the single family home is 24.90, but it's a reduced cost for an apartment unit. So an apartment unit is going to be $1619

and a duplex is going to be $169. So it's a percentage of that hole. Um so as there again as we start to I know there's at least one more apartment complex that's going to be going through this process. Uh that will be that number for them. Um if you want to flip through um I'm more than happy to show you very specific park projects that are coming up. I really have it narrowed down to about five in the next five years uh based on the numbers that we would receive um on all these are estimates. Nobody knows for sure how many building permits we're going to issue. Like the example I gave you, we just had that big apartment complex pump up the uh park impact fees in literally a month. Uh so we don't know for sure, but we can base it on a good estimate. um the five things that you're going to see over the next five years. So, this is I'm excited about this stuff because I get to tell you what we're going to do for the next five or 10 years. Uh really is only five different things that we have identified um over the next five years. And one of them is you probably already heard about, it's already out in the in the in the world is Scott Park expansion. Um, one of the greatest needs we've had over the last 20 years in Franklin has been youth athletic facilities in in the community that we've woefully um, be quite honest with you, neglected u what we should have had based on our population. Um, that next project will happen starting probably this fall and probably go over the next two years in construction. So it um, it's a fairly large project. Um, it will have a little bit of park impact fees because I can go back based on 2025 deficits. We did have uh some deficits in in ball diamonds, but not not a lot. This may end up being a $15 million

project potentially. Uh, we may use uh according to this $500,000 of that 15 million can be park impact fees, but it's going to have um eight softball and baseball diamonds. Um all kinds of other things in it. Guys, uh if you live in the Scott Park neighborhood, um you should love this project because we're hopefully going to get all the traffic off your main road and then new main entrance will now be off Commerce Drive. Uh so that should alleviate the traffic issues there. It has parking slated for 850 cars but versus the 120 so that it can capacity it currently has. Has stuff we don't normally have. uh we'll put in two fishing peers because we now own a huge pond um in Franklin Parks. Um so there'll be all kinds of different things in that project. That's one big project. Another one that's coming up um we're going to renew a park bond that's getting ready to fall off here fairly quickly. Um one of the things that um you'll see us do is renovate the family aquatic center that we currently have. It was renovated uh almost 15 years ago and we're going to do it one more time. And I bring that to everybody's attention because it can only happen one more time because the next time the facility is 50 plus years old. It's just not going to make it anymore. I can't believe we've made it as far as we have. Be like honest with you. We've done a very good job of maintaining it over the years, but it is really really starting to show its age now. We can do a really good job of painting it and making it look nice and colorful and and make the illusion, but the part that nobody sees but the internal people is just that the mechanicals are are terrible. The pool has a leak that um needs to be fixed. And I tell you that because in 10 years from now, you'll see that slated. Um so if we do one more renovation here fairly quickly, then we can stretch it out

maybe 10 more years. Um, you don't want me to publicly say how much that would cost uh because it would blow your mind, especially what the cost would be 10 years from now. So, a new one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz we also can't put it on the existing site. There's all kinds of issues. The parking is not even adequate for half that facility, let alone a new one. So, so we have some fairly large projects coming up. Uh, you have been involved with Kingsbridge. Uh that's another project that um that was the first time we've actually waved park impact fees in lie of the developer actually putting the park in which was from my perspective has been highly successful. Um the park is already there if you want to drive by and see it. The playground's there. Uh the second dog park in Franklin will open up this spring up there. Um, but one of the things we agreed to at the time was that we would do a little bit development if they would do a little bit of development. So, one of those things you'll see on this list is pickle ball courts uh would probably be built at Kingsbridge on park impact fees. I think it's very important because if you live in Nwood, um I think Nwood has been very neglected for a lot of years because it's far north. We haven't had park facilities up there. And all of a sudden, now we're going to have Kingsbridge Park and these trails on 31. So, they're getting access to things that they haven't had before. Shame on us for not getting up there until 2026. But, we're finally going to have some facilities up there for for the Nullwood subdivision and Kingsbridge subdivision, too. Um, that's another project we have on there. Of course, the 31 trails is something that obviously is being done with that project. uh huge when it comes to quality of life and parks because not very many communities are going to have five miles on each side trails uh that span the entire length of the fac of the city

which now gives everybody doesn't matter if you're on the west side or east side access to the greenway trail now because it will all all these spokes that are currently off of it all really come off of 31 somehow. So that's an important one. And then um I haven't talked to Joanna about this one, but one of the things we will eventually need to do is we'll eventually need to run the Greenway Trail up to to Winterfield. Is that what it's called? Right. Right. Um we'll we'll have to do that. That's a that could be a park impact fee project as well. Um so that's kind of the five-year look. The 10-year look, if you really get into the details, it really gets to slim when I do the last five years because I can't anticipate. Um, what what I have learned from this job in 20 years is that it just blows my mind how fast things move in my world for parks. Maybe not for other things, but we just we once we build something, we're on to something else. We just built the active adult center. We're now on to Scott Park. Park impact fees are going to help us fund that. It's not going to do by any means fund all of that stuff. So don't think that park impact fees are the uh savior of all the park uh you know infrastructure we're ever going to build is not uh but it is a tool that we can use to do that. Final thing I'm going to tell you about because you can tell I love to talk about parks. You guys don't normally go this long, do you? Our park board meetings are almost over by now. Um on the very last page, I don't know if you have it in front of it, but you can look at it or Joanna can pull it up. It's it's the only one that's color. um almost the last page like the third one's the last. There you go. That's a comparison because there again most people want to All right. What what's that mean for Franklin? Uh this is us compared to other metro um area kind of indie area communities. Uh with this

plan, we'll be at 2490. That puts us Greenwood is 27.84. Um I'm trying to think of Planefield's 2533. Those are probably two closest ones to us in population maybe. Um, but you see they go all the way up to $6,000. So, um, yeah. So, it is going I I want to be very transparent. It's going from 1142 to 2490. Um, but the difference is instead of collecting a couple hundred,000 over 5 years, we may collect 2 million. Um, that we'll be able to because I want to say it one more time, the projects that we're talking about are fairly large. I mean, Scott Park is a large project. Um, the pool is a large project that we going to have to figure out how to fund somehow. So, our problem is we can't have nice facilities and then let them age out and not have them anymore. Uh, we'll all be run out of town if that's the case. So, um, we have to figure out how to do this somehow. Well, Chip and I, you and I have been around when we first started these projects. And with SB1 being passed this year, in fact, that's one of the things that the legislature has said to local units of government, you need to find other ways to fund things rather than from your general fund, which is your tax where the taxpayers pay on the real real property. Um, much like park impact fees, there things like road impact fees were actually promulgated. At the same time, park impact fees were uh permitted by the legislature 25 30 years ago, but because they said, "We want to figure out a way not to support these through the general fund that's funded by the taxpayer, but when you have more development come in, how can you get these new fees?" And that's that's why they're here. They're almost if you're going to be able to continue to have a park system, you've almost got to have one of these in place to be able to fund it. The new the new development. Chip, what year did you say that these were put in place? The first plan was was written in ' 05

and started in ' 06. I should tell you that there's there once this is, let me tell you where we're going after this. If you uh decide to do a favorable recommendation to the council, it will go to the council on January the 5th as the first reading and then it will be voted on on the 21st of January. There's a six-month cooling off period after that and then it will go into effect after that. So, Based on the parody that you're talking about, do we have any other impact fees such as sewer availability fee or We do not. Um actually we have had a number of developers as of late that when we talk about projects and what they'll need to do to um upgrade the existing road system, they have actually requested that the city look into road impact fees in lie of um the way that we currently do it. That way everybody knows kind of what the costs are going in. So that is something that the city is looking at and has been looking at. but it has not been implemented to date along the lines Lynn was talking about because I'm familiar with the road impact fee perspective and also familiar with the alternative to that but the sewer impact and the other things I think when we look at the scenario I first of all your parody is right in line I agree but I think based on what Lynn's saying too I feel it's always good and incumbent upon us planning commission along with the city council and administration to defer incumbent costs to taxpayers for the expense of new development. So my point being is they ought to subsidize utilities for their impact, quality of life initiatives, everything is parallel to that. We've paid our way. Not me. I've only been here a short time,

but I've been in the county all my life, too. But and I'm in an existing home that I replaced with somebody else from right down the street from Scott Park. I said that for you. So, but so I what I'm saying in summary, I concur totally, but I would encourage the city also to do as you're saying um based on SP1. Yeah. And it's going to change the rules and the other and there let's be honest about there's an inrun going on right now on SP1. Okay. Mhm. Secondly, as you said, no matter what these impact fees come, with the restrictions state legislature has, you can only use it for improvements to begin with. You can't pay payroll. That's correct. So, you're struggling every day to figure out how to maintain the operations of that pool and everything else that you got under That's correct. your purview. Yep. Well, and to cobble on to what your point is and what Chip said, the developers and the people that are bringing these things in tout, I mean, we Chip and I have had a kindred spirit. I always said CFOs don't move companies to towns and places they wouldn't want to live, right? And the quality of life things are what make people want to live there. So, they tout them. So, this is a way of maybe get those expenses associated with them to at least get them started without the existing taxpayer having to fund them because we just simply won't be able to with SB1 being whatever it is until it gets changed. Um, you're not going to be able to do some of these new infrastructure projects without looking at alternate sources of funding. Yep. to kind of go off for what you just said the validity what you just talked about when I was doing economic development in previous life I had select paths I would bring people in that were looking at opportunities and there was some places I didn't take them in true because it's absolutely if if it's not a quality that you want to be living in yourself it's not a quality that you want to be bringing people in

true what about the u bonding is that what you you'll probably choose to do with the uh new pool and all. Yeah. Uh it's something we're we're trying to figure out now with Scott Park. One of the things we want to do with Scott Park is I need I got to have a definite cost, right? We're we have the concept, but I got to whittle it down to all right, what's it really going to cost? Then we'll figure out if we're going to do a park bond or redevelopment commission bond or something that But it'll definitely have to be bonded because there's just it's too expensive not to. Yeah. And usually how how long is the bond extended to? I mean we 15 20 years. It just depends. Yeah. A lot of it will depend upon the council's appetite for interest interest and what your interest rates are going to be. Um we for instance the sewer bond we went with a shorter period of time uh because our interest rate was better. No it was better. So it's a bigger expense. Um but it was Yeah. And I think it lower interest. How many millions of dollars? You you'll remember Irene is significant. Yeah it was. It was lower. Yeah. Lower interest rate. We almost like knocked off five years just because Yeah. five or 10 years off of the bill. Yeah. The current the current park bond that's getting ready to go off was 15 years as well. Yep. Yeah. Anyone have any comments, questions or thoughts regarding this resolution PC 202532? We also need to open it to public comment. Yeah, we have to open to public comment. Would anybody like to speak in regards to PC 2025 202532? It's a resolution um adopting or excuse me, reaffirming park impact fee and and setting a scale of 2490. Correct. Yeah. And we're making a recommendation to council who ultimately adopts it if they choose to.

Seeing none, we'll close the opportunity for anyone to speak in regards to that. I'll make a motion to move it. Move the PC 2532 um to the city council for approval. Got a motion by Nelly. Second. Second. Second by Stringer. All those in favor signifies by I. I. Those opposed. Same sign. Passes unanimously. Chip, thank you for the job you do and have a merry Christmas to you and your staff. other business. Uh the only thing I would like to um give you an update on is the comprehensive plan. Staff has been meeting monthly with HWC who is our consultant in that process. Uh we just met yesterday and are continuing to move forward. The participation from the public and our focus groups turned out very well. Um, I was pleasantly surprised and very happy to see that our residents and our community members were as active as they were in that process. How many people did we have show up? We had well we had over 300 um participants overall through providing information on the survey that was online um attending the focus group meetings. Um visiting the booths at the farmers market also at Cash Bash cashbash that way. Um I always get it backwards so I was questioning myself. Um and then we also had boards that were set up at the public library and um city hall and the active adult center. So that's great. That's great to get that

kind of input. Last time we had no one. We beg people to show up. Great. So having been through that process um in 2013, it was refreshing to see as much involvement as we did. Um but we are still on schedule. So right now they are anticipating getting us a draft of the document around March, April and then we'll start proceeding with the process of bringing it before plan commission uh for review and recommendation and then forwarded to city council. That's all. Anything else? Do we have a motion for adjournment? I make a motion that we adjourn. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. Second. Second. All those in favor signify by I. I. I. I. Those same.